The Lion Dance, performed by the Hong De Athletic Association, is part of the celebration of Chinese New Year at the Lingnan restaurant.

Photograph by: Shaughn Butts
, Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - If you like stories, you’ll love Chinese New Year.

Practically every dish on the table tells a tale, including the plate piled high with food, and then left at an empty chair to reflect the inclusion of ancestors at the meal. Ingredients are also steeped in meaning; glutinous “sticky” rice is served to ensure that good luck sticks with the diners, all the new year long.

A whole fish is standard New Year’s fare, because a fish also symbolizes good luck, and you wouldn’t want to cut your luck in pieces by chopping off the head and tail.

At the same time, according to Linda Tzang, curator of cultural communities at the Royal Alberta Museum, serving fish or chicken with the head and tail intact reflects the Chinese preoccupation with freshness. You know an animal is fresh when it’s still looking you in the eye.

Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year, is the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar. It is estimated that close to half a billion people travel for the New Year in China, as migrant workers visit their home villages for the annual holiday. Chinese people elsewhere in the world also take time to gather with their families.

“This is essentially a harvest festival for an agrarian economy,” says Tzang, noting it’s common for a Chinese rural family to raise a pig to slaughter and eat during the New Year’s celebrations, an enormous treat, particularly in impoverished areas.

Traditionally, the event is celebrated over 15 days, with 15 special meals that begin on the new year itself. The first five days are celebrated with the family at home. The next five days see people visiting each other, bringing gifts of food, including oranges and candies — “sweet things for the New Year,” says Tzang.

The celebration grows bigger throughout the last five days and culminates in a Lantern Festival that is said to banish the old year. A sticky rice ball with a filling such as black sesame seed, floating in a special soup, often marks the end of the festivities.

Tzang is an expert on Chinese dishes of all descriptions. It’s partly because she is Chinese, having emigrated to Vancouver from northern China when she was five years old. But her expertise is also rooted in her job at the museum, where she is in charge of its current, popular exhibit titled Chop Suey on the Prairie — a look at the roots of the Chinese café in small-town Alberta.

As part of that role, Tzang has organized a series of Chinese meals with the assistance of Friends of the Royal Alberta Museum. The series, called Dining with Friends, is linked to the exhibit, which ends in April.

Each meal takes place at a different style of Chinese restaurant in Edmonton that offers a different regional specialty — from Peking Duck to Szechuan Beef. Tzang comes to each meal to talk about the food, emphasizing that Chinese dishes vary dramatically, region to region.

To mark Chinese New Year, Tzang and 80 other fans of Chinese food gathered at The Lingnan, a restaurant run by three generations of Quons and serving Edmontonians their favourite dishes since 1947. Though Chinese New Year falls on Jan. 31 this year, the celebration took place last week at the restaurant, complete with a traditional lion dance to kick off the Year of the Horse.

Miles Quon of the Lingnan says Chinese people can be superstitious, and even more so at Chinese New Year. He made sure to serve dishes with ingredients that not only tasted good, but had special meaning.

Cashews, for instance, are linked to gold and wealth because they look like ancient Chinese gold ingots and, when roasted, turn a lovely golden colour. The shape of a cashew is also reminiscent of a smile, which signifies happiness, says Quon.

He says shrimp is on the menu because the translation for the word “shrimp” in Cantonese is “ha,” which sounds much like a laugh, meaning happiness.

Tzang says the double meaning of the word shrimp reflects a Chinese predeliction for homonyms — words that sound the same, but have different meanings. A traditional Chinese New Year vegetarian dish features a kind of mossy vegetable that sounds like the word “hair” when you say it out loud, and that is a homonym for growth, or good fortune.

The Lingnan’s Cashew Chicken Ding

Serves one to two people. Think local when purchasing your fresh chicken. Miles Quon of the Lingnan measures out his vegetables by weight for the stir-fry, but it’s also fine to roughly estimate the amount of raw vegetables you would prefer in a stir-fry for one or two people, and also to use what you have in the fridge.

Ingredients

6 ounces (170 grams) chicken

2 stalks celery, diced

3 ounces (85 grams) carrots, diced

2 ounces (60 grams) mushrooms, diced

2 ounces (60 grams) baby corn

1 ounce (28 grams) green peas

1/4 small onion, diced

1/4 cup (50 mL) chicken stock

1 teaspoon (5 mL) Chinese cooking wine

1/4 cup (50 mL) cashews, roasted, for garnish

Seasoning ingredients

1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) chicken broth mix, powder

1/2 teaspoon (2 mL) light soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon (2 mL) cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) sugar

Dash of white pepper

2 drops sesame oil

1 tablespoon (15 mL) water

1 tablespoon (15 mL) oil

Sauce ingredients

1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) chicken broth mix, powder

1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) sugar

2 drops sesame oil

1/2 tablespoon (7 mL) oyster sauce

2 teaspoons (10 mL) cornstarch

1 tablespoon (15 mL) water

Method

Cut the chicken into small cubes. Prepare seasoning mix. Rub chicken with seasoning mix and set aside for 10 minutes, then fry chicken until cooked and set aside.

Stir fry vegetables (except onion) in a small amount of oil. Set aside. Prepare sauce in bowl and set aside.

Sauté onions. Add the other cooked vegetables to the pan, along with the chicken, cooking wine and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and thicken with the sauce mixture. Sprinkle with roasted cashews and serve.

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